


Roll Up (Throw Down)

by liodain



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Banter, Bets & Wagers, Cage Fights, Extra Treat, Fairgrounds, Flirting, M/M, Pantsing for Fun and Profit, Technically a Date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25531033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liodain/pseuds/liodain
Summary: The Darkmoon Faire is in town, and Flynn Fairwind has a game plan.(And yes, it involves being shot out of a cannon. I mean, it's not a critical part of the plan, but what else would you expect from him.)
Relationships: Flynn Fairwind/Mathias Shaw
Comments: 23
Kudos: 133
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	Roll Up (Throw Down)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



> ❤

Another fine day in Stormwind, as far as Mathias Shaw could tell.

His room had no windows because even on the third floor of SI:7's heavily guarded Old Town headquarters, windows were a security vulnerability. Despite this ensuring his office was as impervious to sunlight as it was to unwanted visitors, things were still perhaps a degree or two warmer than he enjoyed. Coffee was a disagreeable thought even when left to go cold as was customary, and his operatives had reported to him in various degrees of red-faced sweatiness that were all disproportionate to the tasks he'd set them. He concluded it had been, as the Captain might say, a scorcher.

Speaking of.

Shaw looked up from his stack of mission reports. Silverpine, Tirisfal, Alterac: all dead ends. "Don't you have a home to go to?"

Captain Flynn Fairwind had been leaning in his doorway for the past few minutes, arms folded as though daring anyone to ask him why he was there. That was exactly why Shaw had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Flynn had long made a sport of vexing him, and at the close of the Fourth War, seemed to have followed Shaw across the ocean for the sole purpose of continuing to do just that. 

Bothersome. 

Flattering, in some respects. But mostly bothersome.

Flynn grinned his ever-amiable grin. "I go where the tides take me, mate." 

"Prevailing winds seem to be in my direction."

"Fair winds, you might say."

Shaw set his report aside with a sigh. Flynn laughed, wiping at his perspiring forehead. Stormwind's dense humidity was a different beast to Kul Tiras' maritime climate and he was suffering in the heat, if the conspicuous absence of his longcoat and the dark patches on his shirt were any indication. Shaw could do without the distraction his prominent display of forearms presented, but that was a gripe that would cause more trouble than it'd solve if he voiced it. 

"Is there something I can help you with?" 

The question was rote already, as was Flynn's one-shouldered shrug in response. Shaw stood and began to gather his belongings, assuming he wasn't going to get any further work done. Flynn had gotten derailing his day, and, he was starting to think, his life, down to a fine art. Granted, in this instance Flynn was rescuing him from once again going over the same scarce intel he had at his disposal. He'd have as much luck scrying the Banshee Queen's whereabouts in his coffee grounds. Not for the first time lately, he considered taking a vacation.

"Nothing in particular. Whew." Flynn straightened out of his slouch, pulling the collar of his shirt away from his neck and fanning it. "It's just nice and cool in here. From your general demeanour, I'd warrant." 

Shaw paused mid-shuffle of papers and gave him a look.

Flynn beamed back at him. "Ah, like a blast of crisp mountain air. Could freeze the balls off a brass monkey." In a conspiratorial stage whisper, he added, "It's okay, you can smile. I won't tell anyone."

Shaw did smile despite himself, directing it at his desk as he marked his place in his paperwork. "All right," he said, allowing some fondness to trickle into his voice. "Since you're only here to bother me, you can walk and do it."

"Ugh, outside?"

"It ought to be bearable this late in the day, even for the likes of you."

"It's hardly pleasant! I don't know how you mainlanders manage it. Everything's so soupy. Dare I say... moist. No wonder you're all a parrel bead short of a gaff rig around here, I'm damper than a siren's—hey!" 

Shaw politely shunted Flynn out of his office so that he could secure the various locks and wards on his door while he prattled on, since they'd still be here well into the evening if he were to wait for his observations to run their course. He was never short of something to say, no matter how impolite or impolitic. Everything fortified to his satisfaction, he descended the stairs and headed outside with Flynn on his heels. The low evening sun sloped across the training yard, blinding when it wasn't eclipsed by the stone walls. 

Flynn slanted his hand to his forehead, squinting at the sudden brightness of outdoors. "You know, I've been thinking a bit," he said. 

"Well, that _is_ news."

"Not bad, but you've used that one before. Anyway, I've been thinking, and what I think is that since I'm hanging about, you may as well make use of my specific set of skills. My affinity for the underhanded. My proficiency, if you will, for perfidy."

"Rob one treasury and all of a sudden you're a master thief."

Flynn fell into step with a brassy jangle of cutlasses, close enough that his shoulder occasionally brushed Shaw's. Shaw could take a step to the side, but by now he'd ascertained it was by no means an accident and that any attempt to maintain a significant distance would result in him being wedged against a wall, or worse, balanced precariously on the lip of a canal. 

"Hardly my first. As you well know, I've a long and storied history when it comes to plundering all sorts of desirables." He gave the lacing of Shaw's armour a sidelong glance. The man was many things, but subtle was not one of them. "And if you'll entertain it, hopefully won't be the last."

"Captain," Shaw cautioned.

"Spymaster," Flynn tossed back without missing a beat, having adopted what he probably thought was a guileless expression. He successfully maintained it for a matter of seconds before his grin resurfaced.

Shaw shook his head, turning away so the upward twitch of his moustache wouldn't betray him. The company had certainly been as invigorating as the traps. "As I recall," he said, "I did most of the work."

"My arse you did. There's no 'I' in team, you know." Flynn loped ahead, turning around to continue the conversation walking backwards, presumably so he could better convey his earnest disagreement.

"There is in 'insurance risk'." Shaw steered him around a draenei the size of a tank and onto the canal bridge that would lead them to the trade district. "I have enough paperwork to manage, don't you think?"

"I can take care of any I happen to, uh, generate."

"I saw the documentation you turned in with your Azerite consignments. You cannot."

Flynn conceded that with a laugh. "Fair enough. Just thought I'd let you know I'm… available. Oh. By the way. That Kendor fellow is up to something. Heard him mouthing off in the Pig and Whistle again."

Shaw decided it would be in his best interests not to ask, but in traditional fashion, Flynn was set on telling him anyway.

"I know you think my ears don't work when my mouth's open, but I was talking to Bartleby because he owed me fifty gold after last week's card game and he'd only gone and decided to pay in installments. So there we were at the bar, and I said to him, 'now, listen here, Barty, I don't know how you folk do it in Stormwind but that'd get you tarred and feathered where I'm from.' So then _he_ said… er, wait, what was it."

Shaw closed his eyes for some brief respite, gesturing for him to get to the point.

"All right, all right, you old cuss. Long story short, nobody needs de-feathering and he still owes me twenty and a drink, but while we were there negotiating—" He paused to make air quotes. "—I heard Kendor boasting to some other fellow about how he's about to rake it in off some gladiator match. Sounded pret-ty sure of himself. Sure enough to get a few rounds in on his own silver."

"Hm." Hardly a priority, current pressures considered. Shaw smoothed down his moustache in thought. "My agent embedded in the brawler's guild hasn't reported any fixing attempts lately."

"I heard what I heard," Flynn said with a shrug. He spun on his heel and returned to Shaw's side, relieving him of the concern that he was going to trip over his own feet and pitch himself into one canal or another. "How about—what the blazes?" 

A gnome bedecked in a green-and-purple striped tailcoat tottered up on a pair of stilts. She paused, shook a handbill loose from the stack she had wedged under one arm, turned a pirouette, and thrust it at Flynn. He caught it against his chest.

"Blimey. Well, thanks very much," Flynn called after her as she sashayed off. He smoothed the handbill out and looked it over. "What's this about then."

"The Faire's in town, evidently."

Flynn scrunched his nose as he read the smudged mimeograph print. "Fun and games and wondrous sights! Music and fireworks to light up the night!" He looked up, eyes shining. "Fireworks. Might like that."

"I'm sure you would," Shaw said.

"Oh, look at this. There's a rollercoaster!"

"There is."

"And a petting zoo!"

"Indeed."

The trade district was usually busy well into the evening. Today was no exception; the streets were packed with adventurers from across Azeroth, all manner of folks coming together in a display of ill-advised fashion decisions. The Darkmoon barkers in their garish coats blended right in, sidestepping oversized glowing weaponry and deftly avoiding any number of impalement incidents as they handed out their flyers.

Flynn had fallen silent for a suspicious amount of time. Shaw glanced at him. He was mopping his brow with the flyer. He glanced back, opened his mouth, closed it, frowned as though thinking deeply, opened it again. "Say. At this Faire. Is there a fighting—"

"Yes," Shaw said tiredly, the trajectory his evening was about to take coalescing much like a headache might. "Yes, there's a fighting ring."

"Well then. I'd say it's our duty to investigate, don't you think?" Flynn looked far too satisfied by this manoeuvre. Shaw would assume he routinely tried to get away with this kind of thing on the basis of his good looks, though his oft-broken nose told of a middling success rate. 

"Whose duty?" Shaw said. "I'll get someone on it."

"Come on, a little culture will do me good. And I know you're itching to do more than sit in the middle of that web of yours, tugging away at all those threads."

"Perhaps, but whack-a-gnoll didn't factor in to the alternatives."

"There's whack-a-gnoll?" Like everything else about the Faire, Flynn was inordinately delighted by this prospect. "Terrific! I'll win you a stuffed toy."

*

"I can't be doing with that uniform, of course," Flynn said as they ambled down the steep wooded path toward the fairground. "Silly fiddly bits aside, I'd need to keep my coat. It's my signature look."

He'd retrieved the shabby old thing before they'd made their way here, despite his ongoing complaints about the heat, humidity, mugginess and other increasingly colourful synonyms, some of which Shaw was confident he'd made up. He refused to believe on principle Flynn's claim that Kul Tirans had over a hundred different words for 'this kind of bastarding weather'. 

"You can keep your coat. You wouldn't make it through basic training." 

"Oof. Don't pull your punches, mate, tell me what you really think."

Truth be told, Flynn would be more than capable should he put his mind to it. Tradecraft presented a sinister and often unscrupulous view of kingdom politics that was difficult for some to stomach, but Shaw suspected he would take it in stride well enough. He didn't have much in the way of idealism for Shaw to worry about, after all.

The problem was the frequent lapses of common sense, presumably symptomatic of the drinking. It made him reckless. Slapdash. The kind of thing that would get him into trouble, or worse. Always an experience, seeing an operative's body laid out in finality. One Shaw tried not to repeat more than was completely necessary. 

"Just being honest with you, Captain."

"Well, if _I'm_ being honest, I think you're underestimating me."

Shaw made an ambivalent noise.

"You are!"

"Mmhm."

"Oh, you're a right ornery bastard."

"Can't deny it."

"Ha! Well, if all rivers were sweet where would the sea get its salt." Flynn shot him a sly look. "Let's settle it, then."

"And how do you intend to do that?"

"With a strategic wager. Bet I can get a secret out of you by the end of the night. If I do, you have to give me a fair shake at the spy biz. Deal?"

Shaw took a deep breath of warm night air and let it out in a soft laugh. He held out a hand. "All right. Good luck."

"Luck's got nothing to do with it." Flynn grasped Shaw's hand and gave it a firm pump, then clapped his other hand over the top, drawing things out far beyond what Shaw would consider a reasonable length for a handshake before finally letting go.

The heat of the day had dissipated as dusk drew in; the sun left the sky stained an ominous red. It was fitting. The Faire itself always struck Shaw as faintly menacing in a way he couldn't put his finger on. Perhaps it was the unblinking orange eye motif, recurring everywhere, seeing everything. Or perhaps it was that carnival food gave him indigestion.

Flynn immediately started chaffering with the token vendor, a goblin in a top hat who was predictably enthusiastic about a spot of bartering. An agreement was struck, coin changed hands, and from the goblin's self-satisfied smirk, Shaw had no doubt Flynn had paid more than he would have if he'd just bought the damn things outright. Well, what he didn't know couldn't hurt him. He'd had fun, and his fingers were sticky enough that he'd recoup his losses in good time. 

Shaw patted his arm in thanks. Flynn smiled at him in a way that made him turn his attention fervently to the fireworks crackling above.

"I gotta hand it to you, there's nothing like this on Kul Tiras." Flynn gazed around at the bright string lights, the banners and bunting and fire jugglers, taking long deep inhales of the Faire's eclectic food smells. He thrust his arm out suddenly with a theatrical gasp, thwacking Shaw across the chest. "Look at that _beauty_ ," he exclaimed, and, narrowly missing a draenei and a blood elf locked in a competitive smooch, bounded towards—ah. Of course.

"Ever been fired out of a cannon?" Shaw asked him, though he had a fair idea of what the answer might be.

"Not voluntarily." No doubt he had an anecdote about that, but he instead opted to whoop with glee as a dwarf was hurled explosively toward a soggy landing at the coastline. "Brilliant. Brilliant. But first things first. Where's this fighting ring?" 

It was at the far end of the grounds. With his usual companionableness, Flynn flung an arm over Shaw's shoulders as they weaved among the carnival goers. The night was growing increasingly cool and his warmth was welcome. If he noticed Shaw leaning closer than was usual, he didn't say anything about it. Too busy beaming at his surroundings, taking in the spectacle of the Faire with unabashed enthusiasm.

A steel-caged arena housed beneath a big top dominated this end of the grounds. A cluster of patrons furtively exchanged coins and tokens by the bleachers, and in the ring itself, a grizzled old orc was raking the sand out smooth, bending to pick out the occasional tooth.

"Here we are," Shaw said. "The Darkmoon Deathmatch pavilion."

Flynn stopped short so abruptly Shaw almost lost his footing.

"I'm sorry, the what?"

"The Darkmoon—"

"Oh, I heard. Deathmatch. It's a death pit. A death pit!" Flynn lifted his arm from Shaw's shoulder to better quail dramatically, palms flat to his cheeks. It was a bit much, even by his standards. "You might've mentioned that part!"

"I wouldn't take it literally. It's mostly posturing."

"Mostly?" Flynn stared at him, obviously not convinced. "You know what, I'm going to leave this one to the professionals."

Shaw rolled his eyes, then stopped rolling them and frowned instead when it looked as though Flynn was serious about taking off. He caught him by the sleeve. "Where are you going?"

"Where do you think I'm going? To fire myself out of a cannon." Flynn shook him off and hiked a thumb over his shoulder. "Take care of all this, would you?"

It wasn't the first time Shaw had heard something to that effect, but he was usually the one saying it. He sighed. Flynn just leaned in and bumped his nose to Shaw's with a daft chuckle, gave his cheek a pat and then frolicked off into the crowd. 

"Splendid," Shaw muttered under his breath, but the longer he stood there trying to be irritated, the more his temper wanted to dissolve into forlornness about being left alone—here, in the midst of so many people. Ridiculous. He navigated people every day without touching them, and had always remained untouched in turn.

A bell clanged, startling him out of his mood. Five minutes until the next brawl. Well. Seemed he had nothing better to do at present. He may as well see that everything here was above board.

And the best way to ensure the fight wasn't fixed?

Win it himself.

*

A chorus of groans went up when Shaw stepped into the ring, but he didn't turn a hair. The nature of his work meant he was long accustomed to a chilly welcome, and frankly, he wasn't here to make any friends.

An immense tauren stood on the northern edge of the ring. Her mane was braided and decorated with dainty yellow flowers, but the axe she held was large and keen, and she was clad head to toe in heretofore unseen quantities of spikes. Shaw would do well to take her out with haste, or perhaps trick her into doing it herself with a vigorous shrug.

Skulking about on Shaw's left, a druid that had taken on a feline form. Probably thought they were doing an acceptable job of keeping a low profile, but acceptable was not good enough when one's fur was a vibrant turquoise. On his right, a duo of void elves, obviously a team. One in leather, the other berobed and with the unmistakable smug aura of a priest. 

A pandaren shaman, his fingertips crackling with nervous lightning, rounded out the competitors. Shaw weighed the odds and decided he could ignore him.

He rolled his shoulders, dipped into his belt pouch and retrieved a cluster of smoke bombs, nestling them in the sand around his feet. Under a minute until things kicked off, by his estimation. Out in the fairground proper he heard cannonfire, and Flynn's distinct holler as he rocketed overhead. Shaw would take that as an omen of luck, though whether good or bad remained to be seen.

Pitmaster Crushskull, standing on top of the bleachers, took a deep breath, funnelled his hands at his mouth and bellowed at the top of his lungs, " _Let the Darkmoon Deathmatch begin!_ "

The druid pounced. Shaw cracked a bomb with his heel and ducked, scattering a handful of blinding powder in his wake. Its principal ingredient was fadeleaf. Notoriously popular in certain druidic circles. 

The stink of ozone filled the air. Shaman taking his chances. Fair play to him. Shaw grabbed the priest by her voluminous sleeve and slapped her spellbook out of her hand. He caught her absolutely affronted expression a split second before the tauren came charging through the smoke shoulder-first, impaling the priest's sleeve with her ridiculous pauldron spike and embedding both of them into one of the arena's heavy wooden fencing posts. 

The tauren seemed to know some choice Thalassian words, which riled the elf further. They devolved into a bickering match while trying to tug themselves free. In the meantime, the smoke dissipated, revealing the cat-druid wiggling about on their back in the fadeleaf and drooling, their eyes saucer-wide.

Three down. Shaw turned his attention to the second void elf. He was intent on the shaman, daggers in hand and his back to Shaw. Rookie mistake. Shaw slid through the shadows, hooked his fingers into the elf's trousers and, honour always being conveniently low on his list of priorities, gave them a quick sharp downward tug. 

Understandably astonished to find himself dacked in the middle of combat, the elf tripped over his own pants and fell face-first, pale violet backside-up, at the shaman's feet. The shaman was decidedly unimpressed by this turn of events. He threw down his hammer and shield and plonked down onto the sand, arms folded over his rotund belly.

Shaw raised an eyebrow at him. He threw up his hands. Rank amateurs. Shaw shrugged back and glanced up at the pitmaster.

"... we, er. Have a winner?" Crushskull hazarded.

The audience, who had not risen above a confused muttering for the whole fifty-seven seconds of the fight, exhaled with a collective air of disappointment.

*

Shaw located Flynn sprawled on a bleacher, absolutely soaking wet. His longcoat was laid out on the bench beside him, and his hair, a bedraggled mess half-escaped from its tail, steadily dripped seawater into a bucket of popcorn he had balanced in his lap. He truly was beyond explanation sometimes.

He waved Shaw over, shirt clinging remarkably to every solid inch of his sailor's shoulders. "Oh, what breathtaking peril. I do like to watch you work," he said, at the same time stuffing another handful of popcorn into his mouth. He set the bucket down, sprang to his feet and gave Shaw a boisterous clap on the back.

"If only you felt the same way when I'm trying to read my field reports."

Flynn snorted a laugh around his mouthful. "The looks on their faces, though," he said, expirating fragments of popcorn. "Did you see them? Devastated." 

He shook out his coat and pulled it on. The fur lining was dry, so at least he'd had the foresight to take it off before being fired into the bay. His lapel was sticking up. Shaw straightened it for him without thinking about it, which earned him another of his beatific grins.

Shaw cleared his throat. "I take it you're having a good time."

"Yeah," Flynn said, low and warm, "and it's about to get even better. Oi, Kendor!"

He caught the arm of a surly-looking fellow who was trying to shuffle out of the arena along with the rest of the disgruntled patrons. Kendor fixed Flynn with a look that Shaw could have told him would have no impact whatsoever, then pursed his mouth and handed over a heavy pouch of coin without a word.

"Wait." Shaw pinched the bridge of his nose, the predicted headache finally starting to manifest. "You had money on this?"

Flynn pocketed the gold with a wink and gave Kendor a consolatory pat on the shoulder. "Cheers, mate. Better luck next time."

"What a farce. Didn't even draw his weapons," Kendor grumbled. "I don't know how you got that stick out of the uptight bastard's backside, but like hell am I—"

Flynn took a step into Kendor's space. Shoulders back and drawn up to his full height, he stood a good few inches over most Stormwindians. Shaw hadn't conceived that he could use them to loom. Intriguing. Kendor went a little wild-eyed.

"Appreciate your patronage and all, but if you talk about him like that again I will gut you from stem to stern," Flynn said in his usual cheerful tones.

It was easy to forget that Captain Fairwind had been a pirate of some repute. As rousing as this glimpse of his ruthless loyalty was, it made for a more volatile situation than Shaw would prefer. He cut in, tugging Flynn back before things could escalate. 

"I'm quite capable of running him through myself, thank you," he said. "And you as well, for that matter."

"Blimey. Well, there's something to look forward to."

"Excuse us," Shaw said to a pale-faced Kendor, and was waved off with a grimace. He encouraged Flynn out of the pavilion by the back of his collar, allowing him to make all the arguments he liked while shepherding him in the direction he wanted, away from the hustle of the Faire and to a quiet spot along the boardwalk.

*

"And, well, you know what they say," Flynn said a little later, perched on a barnacled pier. He'd sat himself thigh-to-thigh with Shaw, their shoulders pressed together and their feet dangling over the edge of the weatherbeaten boards; the sea sloshed placidly beneath them, silvered by the twin moons. Someone had abandoned a fishing pole here, which Flynn had been quick to claim. 

"No. What do they say?"

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day." Flynn cast with a whip of the line, the soft whirr of the reel. "Show him how to fish... good luck getting him to work another day in his life."

The stars wisped overhead; the fairground was a distant riot. Shaw watched the lure arc over the moonlit water and drank in the brackish scent of the night, its peace. He'd found a fist-sized piece of driftwood on the high tide line. He turned it over in his hands, running his thumb along its scoured and sunbleached surface.

"Is that your excuse?" he said, which made Flynn laugh and lean against his shoulder. "There was no fix, was there."

"Oh, yep, yep, there definitely was." Flynn patted his bulging pocket. "Just not the one you were expecting, I imagine. Thanks, by the way. The odds on you even turning up were longer than my rap sheet."

Shaw should be angry. Certainly annoyed. At minimum, mildly piqued, and definitely not in the least bit enamoured of this man and his habitual chicanery. It wasn't a trait Shaw should be encouraging. That would probably be easier if he were just the handsome idiot everyone thought he was.

"You deliberately misled me," he said, trying to drum up some antipathy. It sounded arch. He hadn't realised he could sound arch.

"Misled is a boring word. I prefer... hoodwinked." Flynn wound his line and frowned at the wad of seaweed he'd landed. He set about untangling it. "Bamboozled. Flummoxed. Anyway, it isn't my job to tell you what you need to know, is it?"

"That may be the case, but I would appreciate more honesty from you in future." He pressed the edge of his belt knife into the driftwood and set about paring away the parts that weren't a bird.

"Well, you know me. Rather beg forgiveness than ask permission." Flynn released the seaweed back into its natural habitat with a little wave farewell and set the pole down. "It's not like you'd have agreed to it."

"Not to the match fixing, no. Strictly speaking, I ought to toss you in the Stockades for a month."

"My, my. Going to discipline me, Master Shaw?"

Shaw looked up from his whittling. "Keep on like that, and I might."

"Excellent. I do like a good reaming."

Shaw found he was in legitimate danger of smirking. He made himself sigh heavily instead.

"Make sure you really eat—er. Chew me out."

"That's it. You're under arrest."

Flynn guffawed. "You'll have to catch me first, mate," he said, though he was hardly about to make a break for it. He rested his hand on Shaw's shoulder instead, propping his chin on it to watch him carve. "So, er. No to the match fixing, which I suppose is reasonable, but am I right in thinking there's something you _would_ say yes to?"

Shaw paused, then set his knife and wood aside. All his life he'd made a solitude and called it peace, taking some grim pleasure in knowing exactly what he'd been made for, and that it wasn't for things like this. Flynn had truly come out of nowhere, striking him like a bolt from the blue. He turned his head to look at the man, huddled close in his relaxed way. So close that Shaw's nose brushed his cheek as he did. Flynn blinked and raised his eyebrows, flushing somewhere under his sunburn and freckles, bold-hearted and full of sentiment, and never afraid to show it.

A dangerous thing, arms held wide open. There was no diplomacy like silence, but he was probably due some honesty. 

"This," Shaw said, after a moment. "Or something like this. Wet pebbles shining in the moonlight, wind through long grass, that kind of thing. Peacefulness. A little space stolen from the hugeness of the night. Just for me and you. That's what I'd say yes to."

Peacefulness, he half-expected Flynn to scoff. With me around? But he only softened further. "You know, Mathias," came his quiet reply. "I think you might be a bit of a romantic."

Shaw smiled. "You'd be surprised. I'm trusting you not to tell anyone."

Flynn smiled back, leaning into him and nudging, nudging with his nose until Shaw relented and cupped his cheek, tilted his head and kissed him. His mouth tasted sweet. Perhaps because Shaw had wanted this so bitterly and for so long. 

Or perhaps, the popcorn. 

"I _am_ surprised." Flynn, all but luminous, swept his thumb across Shaw's cheekbone. Then paused. His eyes shone. "Hey, you know what."

Oh, no, absolutely not. Time to employ some damage control for the sake of operational security, and his blood pressure. Shaw attempted to derail him with hands in his thick damp hair and another kiss, and another with a hint of tongue when that didn't work, but still he wasn't to be dissuaded.

Flynn was, as always, incorrigibly pleased with himself. "You could say it was—" 

Shaw considered pushing him down onto the boardwalk and straddling him. He was certain it wouldn't help, and so far as excuses went, it was a thin one.

He did it anyway. Flynn went over easily, flinging his arms wide and beaming up at him, his smile as boundless as any horizon. "A secret!"

Shaw tried to summon some steely resolve, though he suspected he'd not managed more than a faintly pleading expression. "Captain." 

"Er, excuse me, we had a deal." Flynn Fairwind, scourge of Azeroth's six seas and about to make SI his seventh, bopped Shaw on the nose with a finger. "That's _Agent_ Fairwind to you."

***

**Author's Note:**

> So Shadows Rising dropped when I was most of the way through writing. How about that, then. (this is a casual understatement to disguise the fact I'm losing my mind)


End file.
